Community Rules & Guidelines

Rules & Guidelines

Community Rules

DealsPlus is a community where users can interact and socialize with one another, share ideas, goof off, or just have a good time. It is our highest priority to maintain a safe and fun environment for those who wish to interact with each other. The following rules must be followed by every member of DealsPlus.

The No No's
Violation of these rules will result in consequences on case-by-case basis.

Discriminatory remarks of any kind to any member of the site will not be tolerated.

Inflammatory remarks, intended to hurt or offend a member and/or moderator, are not tolerated.

Messages meant to illicit anger or annoyance from other members are not permitted.

Spamming, public or private, including flooding the message boards, will result in a user ban.

Cross posting, or the posting of the same message across multiple categories or within the same category, is not permitted.

Sensitive topics such as account information and security issues are not to be discussed in the forum. Topics that could compromise sensitive information or serve to potentially harm DealsPlus or its merchants will be deleted.

Pornography, warez and illegal content may not be linked from this forum.

User profiles, including signatures with inappropriate content, will be modified without notification.

How to Deal With Trolls

"An Internet troll, or simply troll in Internet slang, is someone who posts controversial, inflammatory, irrelevant or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum or chat room, with the intention of provoking other users into an emotional response or to generally disrupt normal on-topic discussion."

Generally, trolls view chat rooms as a challenge where the winner is the user who creates the biggest argument -- the user who upsets the most people in the most dramatic way. Trolls aspire to be the user who garners the most attention from users. The easiest type of attention to gain is negative attention. Troll behavior discourages many users and makes for a less vibrant online community. New users may not post because they fear ridicule. Established posters may leave an online community because the noise has overwhelmed the real discussion. Trolls can make an entire community paranoid, leading users to become negative or to accuse a user engaged in normal criticism as a troll.

What should I do (and not do) about trolls?

Remember, trolls feel rewarded by creating as much attention as possible. They want to get a reaction out of you. When you fight with a troll, he wins. When you reason with a troll, he wins. Any time that you give a troll attention, he gets exactly what he wants.

And thus, the best way to deal with trolls is to ignore them. When you ignore a troll, he doesn't get the satisfaction of creating an escalated conflict.

You may also bring an abusive post to the attention of our moderators. Please only do this if the comments violate our Terms of Service or any of the rules above. Violations of our terms and conditions include any post which constitutes a criminal offense, pornographic content, an impersonation of an entity without permission, or an unsolicited promotion. A strongly stated opinion is not a violation of our Terms of Service even if it is stated in a way that you feel is insulting or hateful.

Remember: the best way to deal with trolls is to ignore them. In other words, do not feed the trolls.

What does DealsPlus do about trolls?

Our staff reviews posts that users report as abusive. Our staff has the ability to delete a single post, to delete a whole thread, or to block a user who has a record of continual abuses. Moderators are forced to make tradeoffs between censoring a viable but harshly stated opinion, encouraging open discussion, removing valuable discussion, and sparing people from hurt feelings. Because of the complicated factors in deciding whether or not to remove a post, our staff will only remove a post when it clearly violates our Terms of Service.

A troll has assumed my identity. Please help!

If a troll has assumed your identity and is impersonating you, please report the abuse to a moderator or via our contact form, and provide evidence that a troll has assumed your identity, and we will review your case.